Friday, 15 February 2008, 17:16 GMT
‘£10 licence to smoke’ proposed

Smokers would have to get a licence to light up under the plan
Smokers could be forced to pay £10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way.

No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England.

Its chairman, Professor Julian Le Grand, told BBC Radio 5 Live the scheme would make a big difference to the number of people giving up smoking.

But smokers’ rights group Forest described the idea as “outrageous”, given how much tax smokers already pay.

Professor Le Grand, a former adviser to ex-PM Tony Blair, said cash raised by the proposed scheme would go to the NHS.

Isn’t America all about a little bit of choice? Smoking is a choice and non-smoking is a choice. I don’t know a single bartender or bar owner that is going to turn down service based on wether or not you have a cigarette in your mouth. To compare it racial issues is absolutely absurd!

As someone who works for the restaurant industry and who travels around the country – I am very happy to see that a lot of establishments are making their own choices and are choosing to be smoking or non-smoking.

Isn’t choice really the issue???? Shouldn’t everyone have the right to it?

Now you tell me if this ok with you? Is it ok, that i’m actively harming you and people around you? Laws are in place in most countries to prevent you driving a car without a seatbelt, and yet.. for some unknown god damn reason(money from big companies), smokers can walk around poisoning themselves and everyone around them with impunity. I don’t understand how they can be so callous and oblivious to other people.

I condemn this attempt at flouting if not the actual law that was made, then the spirit of that law.

I would even call it Calvinism disguised as Darwinism. Not survival of the fittest, but survival of those of whom I approve.

Sure. Your smoke gives me a nosebleed and my fist gives you one. No problem. You’re not arguing that you get to have a choice. You’re arguing that you get to have a choice without consequences. Welcome to cause and effect.

Mind you, it’s been a long time since I smoked. But I’ve never kidded myself: if smoking wasn’t a toxic, carcinogenic, insanely stupid habit, I’d be doing it to this day. Also? I’ve gone cold turkey on a number of drugs, and tobacco was unquestionably the hardest to kick.

Every once in a while I accidentally get a snootful of someone else’s tobacco smoke, and I can feel all the little neuroreceptors springing up, wide-eyed and awake, crying “Nicotine! It’s nicotine! You told us when you quit smoking that there was no more nicotine anywhere in the universe, but that was it, and we want some!”

No matter how long ago you quit smoking, you still have the dream where you’ve started again and are really pissed off at yourself — you’re going to have to quit all over again — but in the meantime, as long as you’re temporarily smoking again, gimme another one…

This is not a drug that’s going to go away.

a very little? these days?

Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.4
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Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at work are at increased risk for adverse health effects. Levels of ETS in restaurants and bars were found to be 2 to 5 times higher than in residences with smokers and 2 to 6 times higher than in office workplaces.5
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Since 1999, 70 percent of the U.S. workforce worked under a smoke-free policy, ranging from 83.9 percent in Utah to 48.7 percent in Nevada.6 Workplace productivity was increased and absenteeism was decreased among former smokers compared with current smokers.7

The pink trash father who smokes around the child couldbe a good parent in every other way. Perhaps his abysmal ignorance is just that. Would more harm be wrought by throwing the child into a foster home?

Today the clubs are antiseptic simulacrums of themselves. Pitiful. I feel sorrow for the kids of today not having experienced total freedom indoors. Now, if you stand in the wrong place, 3 meatheads will pounce on you and kick you the fuck out. Draconian.

I’m not, thanks. :-/

Look, if I was working in a factory, my employer would have an obligation to make sure I was working in a safe environment. That includes not being exposed to any dangerous chemicals – even if, by using them, the company could make more money. I don’t see why that should change if I work in a cafe.

AFIK, it has only come up in custody cases- where one parent is seeking custody/increased visitation.

In this particular instance, the baby daddy claims that b/c he has no health problems, and grew up in a household with excessive smoking (beyond clinical depression, multiple suicide attempts), it is evidence that smoking is not bad for children. If he were a moderate smoker, it’d be one thing, but he drinks and chain-smokes around the kid, has friends over who smoke around the kid, ect. It’s as ignorant as ignorant can be. My friends who are heavy smokers, as drunk as they get, know to stop smoking when there’s kids around, especially under 5.

many of us (yes, not everyone here is 22)were raised by well intended parents who smoked.

My father quit in 1979, when I was 3. He said he quit b/c he knew it was bad for us, and b/c he thought we’d learn to smoke watching him. He also said he’d kill us if we ever started, because that’d mean he missed out on a lot of smoking for no reason. It isn’t like we didn’t know smoking was bad until 1999…

Well maddie I was probably flamebaiting a bit so I apologize for that. However, I don’t see how once you try to argue that “a restaurant is private property and should be able to serve their patrons as they please” that you can then turn around and say “except when it comes to racial or sexual discrimination”. On what legal framework are you going to make that case? Because that is what the civil rights era revolved around. It was structured around property rights: “I have the right to deny service to whomever I please” and also around state’s rights: “We have the right to enact a system of racial apartheid (Jim Crow)” The US at large said “No, we don’t want to live in that kind of society”.

The logic of the arguments being made against restricting smokers in this thread are essentially the same: “I have the right to serve smokers because it is a property rights issue”. Once you permit the one, you must permit the other.

Of course laws restricting smoking are not formulated on property rights, they are matters of public health. None the less that is the argument being put forward here and the reason is because they know full well they cannot win on any other grounds.

Isn’t choice really the issue???

At one time America was only a few million people spread out over an entire continent. You could do as you pleased because the next person was literally miles away. That ain’t so any more. There are now 300 million of us and climbing. With increasing population comes an increasing need to consider how what you do will affect or intrude on the rights of others. In many places you can’t burn your leaves any more or have charcoal BBQ’s or drive a polluting car because it affects everyone else around you. More people = fewer choices.

This is just common sense and adjusting your behavior so as not to adversely impact others is called growing up. I recommend it.

Viva La Toast isn’t a smoker, as mentioned above. My husband the bartender isn’t a smoker. My friend the cocktail waitress isn’t a smoker. Obviously, your data set is incomplete.

My friend the cocktail waitress told me that although when she lived in another state she didn’t think she minded working in smoky bars, since she’s been working in California she no longer gets three or four bad colds each winter like she used to. And since, like most waitresses, she has no health insurance or paid sick leave, not getting sick makes a BIG difference to her.

Burn.

I totally understand that it sucks for smokers to go outside especially in the cold Minneapolis winters but quite frankly, I would much rather you suffered the cold for five minutes than I suffered through an asthma attack and its fall out for the next three days not to mention the affects of second hand smoke on myself and other patrons/employees. Call me selfish.

A Ballade Of Tobacco Smoke

What fretting loads we mortals bear
Through life, whose fading rainbows mock
And Time, who drives a splendid pair
Of steeds he never will unyoke,
Sweeps his lean fingers through our hair,
He scarcely leaves a decent lock,
Yet chide him not, if still he spare
The dreams seen through tobacco smoke.

We each must have our little care
To add by contrast to our joke,
A laugh that spreads in vain its snare
To catch the lips of solemn folk.
Well, let us walk through all the fair,
And watch the crowds that sway and shock;
They follow what we see elsewhere–
The dreams seen through tobacco smoke.

Dreamers of dreams in ships of air,
Whose keels have never entered dock,
I wish you may have sounder ware
Than did Alnaschar when he woke!
Statesmen, when strife is high, forswear
For half an hour the wordy stroke,
I fain would hint of better fare–
The dreams seen through tobacco smoke!

Envoi

Prince, when you weary of the chair
From which you govern realms and folk,
Your faithful bard would have you share
The dreams seen through tobacco smoke.

And this guy describes himself as a “Life coach and yoga teacher”. On the other hand, from his blogger profile picture it looks like he made that claim to the wrong person who delivered him with the mother of all beatings.

It sure is fun to watch people argue on the internet!